**Meet the editor**

Dr Jason Benedict received his B.S. in Chemistry from Arizona State University in 2001. He completed his Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Washington in the laboratory of Professor Bart Kahr in 2007. His graduate work involved the optical characterization of anisotropic media including dyed crystals, spherulites, and poled polymers. He was a postdoctoral researcher

with Professor Philip Coppens at the University at Buffalo from 2008-2011 developing time-resolved X-ray diffraction techniques as well as synthesizing and characterizing functionalized semiconductor nanoparticles. In 2011, Dr Benedict joined the Department of Chemistry at the University at Buffalo as an Assistant Professor where he is developing new 'in-house' time-resolved X-ray diffraction, imaging, and spectroscopic techniques and synthesizing novel molecular nanomaterials for a variety of materials science applications.
